Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros Record Self-Titled Third Album

FORMED IN 2007, Edward Sharpe and the
Magnetic Zeros is an 11-person troupe named
in part after a messiah-like superhero dreamt
up by the band’s creative hub and lead vocalist,
Alex Ebert. And you might think it would take
some sort of superhuman power to capture the
lively dynamic of such a mercurial ensemble,
which includes multiple guitarists, male and
female vocalists, pianists and keyboardists,
a drummer and percussionists, an accordion
player, a trumpet player, and a bassist. All it
took, however, was a willingness to leave the
window open to moments of inspiration.

Tracking initial concepts at the band’s
own studio, nicknamed the Ed Shed, in
Ojai, CA, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic
Zeros started the 12-track self-titled
follow-up to 2012’s Here, an album of
lysergic folk-rock and revivalism gospelpop.
With the band’s third album (released
on Community Music/Rough Trade
Records), Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic
Zeros has captured an even warmer,
naturally enriched sprawl of psychedelic
roots-rock hymns. It’s an album where
“all the bells and whistles” refers to actual
instruments, not the over-application
of high-end mixing and mastering
components. We talked to Ebert and the
band’s recording engineer, Matt “Linny”
Linesch, about the ongoing augmentation of
the band’s sonic palette.

So, Alex, Beatles or Rolling Stones?

Ebert: Definitely Beatles.

I figured . . . I hear a definite late-Beatles-meets- early-1970s
Laurel Canyon influence on the new record, and I’m also getting a little Four
Seasons and some Joe Cocker, among other sonic touchstones.

Ebert: Yeah, I’m in. I don’t know what’s been
going on for the last 30 years, but I do think
there’s been a decline in the greatness [of
recordings], and I think it’s a combination
of the production, the performance, and the
songwriting getting buried in mechanization.

Are we putting too much in the signal chain?

Ebert: I came up with a QUOTE that I like,
and it’s: ‘Music is too important to be left
to professionals.’ I think there’s been a
professionalization of the process that’s made
it stale and where you actually can hear the
process before the song. It’s as loud as the
mix . . . everything from [Antares] Auto-Tune
and [Celemony] Melodyne to the amount of
compression to just the amount of gadgetry
in between the song and the playing and
the speakers. I’m a huge fan and love gear,
especially good gear, physical gear, so certainly
this album has plenty of gear going in and out,
but the science has been distilled too far and
the creative side of learning equipment and
experimenting with equipment and getting
sounds that aren’t ‘clean’ and ‘professional’
isn’t heard as much; it’s usually just when
artists are recording and mixing it themselves.

So when did you reduce the separation
between yourself and the recording?

Ebert: I think it actually began with the first
Edward Sharpe album [2009’s Up From Below].
We were ready to start recording and we bought
our own gear, starting with a Trident 70 Series
console. Nico [Aglietti] our [then] guitar player
led the initial charge; he was reading Tape Op
and forums and I’d follow his lead, so together we shucked and jived the album together,
blindfoldedly charging through along with Aaron
[Older], our [then] bass player. It was then I got
into mics, gear in general, and my personality
with recording started coming through.

My style is a fast approach . . . I’m generally
anti-establishment naturally, so anytime anyone
tells me where to put the mic, I instantly don’t
want to. Telling me to not push the board, not to
make it too hot . . . as long as it’s sounding good
and I’m having fun and the moment of inspiration
is not being pushed aside to get the right miking
technique or right setting on the preamp,
that’s when I’m happy. So we started recording
relatively fast, mixing a bit wildly, and we did it all
on tape as part of a huge learning process, because
we didn’t have automation on the board.

Knowing the limitations, what drew you to
the Trident and the tape machine . . . were
you looking for a specific coloration?

Ebert: Oh, we’re all about color, color, color, color,
color. We went with an Ampex MM-1200 because
of the saturation on the low end and all that sort
of beefy stuff down there. The Trident . . . I
personally like the idea that Bowie used the
A Range, and T. Rex used one. Also, a friend
had it, was selling it, so it was an easy thing,
close and relatively cheap . . . we just picked
it up and rolled with it. We rented a bunch
of mics—a Neumann U 47 and TLM 67—we
had the Recording The Beatles book [by
Kevin Ryan and Brian Kehew] and we’d flip
through it to mock some stuff up, then we’d
forge our own way.

What did you find those mics lent to your
desired result?

Ebert: My favorite mic on my voice for almost
anything, except if I want it to be hi-fi, is the RCA
44B . . . that mic is a little wizard with male vocals;
females, it pinches, but male vocals sung in the
lower register, you basically don’t even need to
compress. For me that’s the perfect amount of
color . . . antiquation . . . parallel-universe stuff
on it. I love every version of that mic that I’ve
heard. And then I love the idea of 47s, and if you
get a good one, you got a great one; but there’s
so much variation from mic to mic. A good
one, though, has warmth on the low end and
it’s a hi-def mic . . . no wonder it was George
Martin’s favorite . . . so that I used as much as I
could. But we used an AKG C 12 and a 47 when
recording [female lead singer] Jade [Castrinos].
And also a mic with a C 12 capsule in it, a
Telefunken ELA M 251, which is my favorite if I’m
singing in a higher register. But a lot of my parts
are on that 44B; I think ribbons are intentionally
underused, but they have an amazing EQ bump in
the midrange that I love.

Are you running everything through the
same board into the Ampex?

Ebert: No, we moved up to a Trident 80B. The
main mic pres throughout this entire album
were four channels of [Telefunken] V76s for
separate parts, and then if we were recording
everyone at once, we’d use some pres from
the Trident.

Linny: About two years ago, we started
putting together this studio, based on
experience in various studios, recommendations
from respected producers and engineers and
auditioning various equipment from Vintage
King, etc. We needed gear that had its own vibe
but wouldn’t get in the way of the creative flow.

Recording Edward Sharpe is all about
continually moving forward, so we’re pretty
minimal in our microphone treatment, which
forces us to get creative with getting sounds.
It’s a 50/50 shot whether or not we track with
compression, but we’ve got a stereo pair of Urei
LA-4 compressors, one [Empirical Labs Inc.]
Distressor, two Pulse Techniques Pultecs, the
V76s, the [Shadow Hills Industries] Equinox
analog summing mixer, a [Thermionic] Culture
Vulture, an EMT 140 Stereo Plate, and some
other outboard gear for getting positive
distortion and reverbs, etc. We premix as we go,
and I monitor on the Event 20/20 BAS, plus a
pair of Hot House PRM 165 MK IIs.

Ebert: We finished mixing the album at
Ocean Way Recording [in Hollywood, CA].
We had recorded to Pro Tools HD 10, but I
really wanted to mix on a Neve and they have a
custom expanded 8068 [in Studio B], so we took
the whole thing over there and recorded some
more overdubs while we mixed for a month.

This album sounds like there was a concentrated
effort at tonal depth. . . . Was it a
goal to arrange as much front to back as left
and right?

Ebert: Yeah, I’m not a huge fan of close-miking
everything. I love using the room, so for instance
we weren’t EQing beforehand, but we did use
mic placement for getting things spatially to
sound the way we wanted pre-mix. That’s a key
to me, because you can re-create space with
reverb and slap, but it’s just more fun to make the
drums sound distant and big because you miked
them from far away. Be legitimate.

Linny: In ‘Country Calling,’ there’s the
moment in the song where the music drops
out and Alex says, ‘I’m in the country again.’
There’s actually two voices taking place,
and one of them is him saying it through a
megaphone, and to make it sound that way
we got a megaphone. Why wait to do in the
computer what you can do in the live room?

How far do you take physical experiments?

Ebert: I’ve definitely done tricks, miking the
air vents or whatever, but for me the joy isn’t in
spending an hour-and-a-half taping a mic to a
metal duct, because by then the inspiration gets
clouded. We’d use mics in omni or figure-8 to get
the other side of the sound, mike kicks from the
front with the RCA 77BX over the snare in the
tom area . . . and we’d put this Coles ribbon mic
[the 4038] just off-center from the kick to pick up
the bottom of the snare; incidentally, I found out
The Beatles used it in the exact same place. But
for the most part, it’s just about room miking and
keeping it relatively simple. As soon as something
sounds right to me, that’s it, because the songs
aren’t necessarily complete when we go to
record; they are ideas that are relatively complete
and then we start recording and the process has
to be contiguous to the inspiration to record; it
has to be this thoroughfare that’s created.

For instance, when we recorded the song ‘Life
Is Hard,’ I was already mixing the album and
taking a break to play the grand piano, and Linny
calls from the other room, ‘That’s cool,’ and I
just yell back, ‘Get the mics!’ And this is in the middle of mixing; we’re supposed to be turning
an album in, but still we just start recording. And
I didn’t have the lyrics, I didn’t have the whole
song, but I had enough and I was excited enough
so we went for it. And because I was excited and
we were going for it, we didn’t have a drummer
around, but I had a basketball and I started
bouncing it around and we got three knocks of it
and looped it to create the first beat that’s going
through the whole song.

Linny: I quickly set up the [Neumann]
KM88 and AEA R44 pretty close-miked on
the hammers of the piano to get the chord
progression. Then I spun the KM88 around
to record the basketball, and we tracked over
that using the same mics. And the electric
guitar on the chorus is a Strat going into a
Vox AC30 recorded with an SM57 pumped
into the V76 which has a chassis that allows
us to attenuate the output. So we just drove
the input of the preamp and essentially drove
the tubes of the V76 and pulled the output
back, that’s why it has that wild sound that no
pedal could get.

If you’re embracing the bleed, but you’re
working with nearly a dozen players, how
do you compensate for the congestion?

Ebert: It’s all about making those bold choices,
going ahead and deleting or muting something,
and it’s tough, man. We recorded a beautiful
piano solo in ‘If I Were Free’ that battled the
guitar solo there, and I had to pick someone
and I had to go with the guitar solo, because
it was such an outrageous choice. For all the
instruments you hear, there’s probably at
least double you’re not hearing that had to be
muted or toned down. I’m here with a band of
10 people and I want everyone to be heard at
some point, so I can’t just keep everyone subtle
and just have one thing turned up, because that
doesn’t represent who we are, especially live.
So a large part for me is just EQing things and
riding them in and out of the salient sound.

Walk me through the workflow for mixing
a track.

Ebert: Basically, we had over a year of parts,
which essentially just went through a mic
pre. Then quite often we’d mock up EQs and
compressors using Universal Audio plug-ins or
some Waves stuff. And then we’d get the Pro Tools
session into Ocean Way, where we brought our
Pultecs and a couple compressors . . . our Retro
[Instruments] Sta-Level [tube compressor].

Linny: One of the most recent acquisitions
was the Dramastic Audio Obsidian Compressor.
We were at Ocean Way and we needed
something more transparent as a stereo bus
compressor. It has a built-in sidechain and it’s
an extremely useful compressor, since most of
the other ones we have are so colored.

Ebert: And then they have their [Urei]
1176LNs and, of course, there are the EQs on
the board. So for the most part we set up the
session and we’d break it all out on the board,
and in the cases where we used a digital EQ,
we thought would translate into the real world
we’d keep that mock-up, but for the most part
we’d end up muting all the plug-ins we had
and just start from scratch. We’d send our
drums through a parallel compressor already
built in the board . . . and once in a while
sum them all through a stereo compressor
and an EQ . . . basically we’d put everything through a compressor and an EQ, and see
where we were at. Some stuff, like the bass,
we would end up going with these dbx [160
and 165] boxes a lot, and there were API
[550a] EQs we’d use.

Linny: Having a Fairchild racked up anytime
we wanted to use it was great. And they have a
whole rack of API EQs that go in line with the
EQ on the console by the flip of a button,
so it wasn’t hard to put the songs back into
an analog environment and to let them go
through transformations as Alex would
jump into the live room and play with the
current melodies.

Ebert: I just love making giant changes
on the EQs . . . with instruments, not vocals
. . . just really brash choices to get the song
sounding good. The longest the mix took was
six days, and it would be really frustrating
to be working that long on a single song,
especially if it was just for a single part, like
Jade’s vocal on ‘Two,’ but I would feel like a
great failure for not having it translate. When
she goes up into the upper register loudly, she’s
got this tremendous voice that’s beautifully
overwhelming, and I was just trying to get
the grandeur and the loudness without it
taking your head off. It was a difficult balance
to figure out, and eventually I had to put a
multiband compressor on it, and anytime she
hit anything between 1kHz and 3kHz really
loudly, it would dip so that it would lop that
off and allow it to smile at you. Then when she
dropped back down, it would come back. That
was one of the rare instances when a plug-in
came in handy. It was a UAD one; we have a
quad-core UAD-2 DSP accelerator that’s in the
PCIe slot in Ojai.

Linny: It’s always about bringing out an
emotion, never about fitting into a grid. We’ll
leave something a little fluid in the song,
even if it strays a little wide or bends a little
wildly. Music is naturally not perfect, and
we have to get everything going before we
can hone it or else we’d stifle what’s so great
about the process, which is the fact that it can
fluctuate.